Hugo Dixon

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Spain’s recovery is clouded by politics. Mariano Rajoy has achieved a lot in the two years that he has been prime minister. Growth has finally returned; even unemployment is falling. But as Spain enters a new electoral cycle, the appetite for reform is waning. What’s more, there is a big question mark about what will happen after the next election, which has to be held by March 2016.

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One knee-jerk reaction to Italy’s shock election was to worry about contagion to Spain. As Rome’s bond yields shot up last Tuesday, Madrid’s were dragged up in sympathy. These are the two troubled big beasts of the euro zone periphery and an explosion in either of them could destroy the single currency.

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At a dinner in Madrid earlier this month, the main complaint about Mariano Rajoy was that the new prime minister was treating the electorate like children. Many of the guests, supporters of Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP), understood that Spain had to cut its fiscal deficit and restore its competitiveness. But they didn’t like the fact that the prime minister hadn’t been frank about his plans.

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When confidence in a regime’s permanence is shaken, it can collapse rapidly. The fear or hope of change alters people’s behavior in ways which make that change more likely. This applies to both political regimes such as Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and economic regimes such as the euro.

Author Profile

Hugo Dixon is Editor-at-Large, Reuters News and the founder of Reuters Breakingviews. He is also the author of “The In/Out Question: Why Britain Should Stay in the EU and Fight to Make it Better,” available at http://bit.ly/1qeLQVS. Before founding Breakingviews in 1999, which he edited until 2012, Hugo spent 13 years at the Financial Times, the last five as Head of Lex. He began his journalistic career at the Economist. Hugo is also a budding philosopher. Follow him on twitter: @hugodixon